Mabapa said: “The union de­mands a wage in­crease of 10 per­cent, ser­vice in­cre­ment of 0.5 per­cent that is given to other em­ploy­ees and de­nied to other em­ploy­ees, hous­ing in­crease of 10 per­cent or R5 000, a standby al­lowance of 10 per­cent, fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­ity leave of eight days, and a long-ser­vice award of 15 years with one Kruger­rand.”

Exxaro also con­firmed that NUM had ob­tained a strike cer­tifi­cate and had given no­tice of their in­ten­tion to em­bark on strike ac­tion from 6am yes­ter­day.

“We con­tinue dis­cus­sions with NUM in or­der to re­solve and reach an agree­ment sooner to min­imise the im­pact on em­ploy­ees”.

Mthen­jane said ne­go­ti­a­tions with Sol­i­dar­ity – the other trade union recog­nised for col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing – were con­tin­u­ing as they had not declared a dis­pute.

He said NUM and the JSElisted min­ing com­pany had agreed to meet to­day to con­tinue with ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The black-em­pow­ered di­ver­si­fied min­ing com­pany sup­plies state-owned power util­ity Eskom, other do­mes­tic mar­kets as well as the ex­port mar­kets. The strike is ex­pected to have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the com­pa­nies’ sup­ply to Eskom and its var­i­ous mar­kets.